The Last House on the Left (1972)

To avoid fainting, keep repeating "It's only a movie...It's only a movie..."

It seems to be 70s time these days - Rabid was from 1977, Shock Waves from 1977 as well, and The Last House on the Left is from 1972.

The first things I noticed was the soundtrack. It's very ...70s like. Jazzy. Snazzy. You can just feel the summers of love, and can smell the weed (well, that might just be me) pervading the air. Girls are not wearing a bra, Daddy remarks upon his little girl's nipples, gives her a little gift (see below, maybe to enhance the nipples)... and one o those girls, namely one of our initial protagonist, is going to a concert to visit a gig by a band that dismembers live chickens on stage. Want to see them live.




She and another female friend of hers have no intention to go to that concert, though - they are sitting outside together, exploring the wild, drinking whisky, laughing, having fun. On their way in their car to... somewhere else... they hear of a group of escapees of violent rapists and murderers.




Cut to the violent rapists and murderers - a quite nice group of young men and one woman, whose habits include drinking, smoking, possibly listening to wild music and misbehaving.




The paths of our two parties cross when the two girls meet the youngest of the bunch, as they approach him for weed... and he takes them with him, to get some Columbian Gold. However, things don't go as they are planned.

I find this scene strangely erotic.

Meanwhile, we learn that tomorrow, one of the girls would have her birthday, and the parents are busy preparing the gifts and cake for Mari (their daughter).





Who is, in the meantime, watching helplessly as her friend gets raped.

Next day - Mari's birthday - we can see her being carried out of the flat in which she and her friend found themselves, thrown into the trunk of a car ("right on top of your friend!"), whilst the gang of misfits drives somewhere else - with their car breaking down in front of Mari's place. They take her out of the trunk, down into the dense woods. The police decides to not see the car (could cause problems, you know)... good old law enforcement. You can always rely on them.




It's suspenseful to watch the girls trying to escape from the group of violent fugitives - engaging. Something that this movie has in abundance and which new movies from the US lack is suspense. You never quite know what will happen next, the plot isn't so watered down that you could as well have none, and the plot we do have is simple, straightforward and believable. There's nothing fancy about this movie. And I mean that quite literal. Besides for the beginning, with Mari an her friend drinking and enjoying themselves, every minute of this movie is bleak and mercilessly realistic. Me like.




There's also a constant comical element contained within the movie in the form of the incompetent policemen.

Things start to turn weir when the brutes, who killed Phyllis as well as Mari, show up at the house of Mari's parents. They behave a little bit suspiciously. Junior, the youngest member of the gang and a heroin addict, has nightmares in his withdrawal symptoms about letting the gang shoot Phyllis and kill Mari. Whilst throwing up, Mari's mother hears him, comes to help him to his bed... and notices that the gift her husband gave to Mari looks the same as the chain that Junior/Willow is wearing around his neck. Suspicious, she opens one of the bags of the gang... and finds the bloodied clothes of her daughter. A plan begins to form.




One hell of a bloody plan.


All in all, a pretty enjoyable movie with a satisfying plot, satisfying violence, realistic behaviour, and it looks pretty good for 1972.


7.85/10 things that aren't too little, just afraid *grins*

Staplerfahrer Klaus (2000)

I don't know what to say... hilarious.



Klaus, now one of 37,000 qualified people in Germany who can call themselves fork-lift drivers, experiences his first day at work. It's an educational movie. For people who, you know, learn how to drive forklifts. A friend of mine actually had to watch it during his course.




Klaus is a very careless forklift driver. He is responsible for one supposed death by falling, one zombie-sort-of-thing by knife-to-brain, one loss of two hands,


one separation of torso and legs, one impaled colleague, one severed head (his own), another impaled person, one severed arm with chainsaw and one cutting in half of an injured guy. All that by virtue of fork-lift driving.

Nifty little movie if you're bored and have 9 minutes to kill.






6/10 for the sheer hilarity and the tongue-in-cheek humour

Cannibal Holocaust (1980)

Man is omnipotent; nothing is impossible for him. What seemed unthinkable undertakings yesterday are history today. The conquest of the moon for example: who talks about it anymore? Today we are already on the threshold of conquering our galaxy, and in a not too distant tomorrow, we'll be considering the conquest of the universe - and yet man seems to ignore the fact that on this very planet there are still people living in the stone age and practicing cannibalism.

There is so much baggage and back story that goes with the movie that it is entirely impossible to simply write a review of Cannibal Holocaust without delving a bit into the reasons why this movie is as infamous as it is.

But first, I'll try to give you a short synopsis of what passes for a plot in this flick: Professor of anthropology Harold Monroe (Robert Kerman) travels to the Amazonas - the "Green Inferno" - in search for a team of four young people, who travelled there to film a documentary about cannibalism as practised by certain tribes living in that area. Together with Chaco Losojos, a man who knows the jungle like his, errr, pockets and what I can only surmise to be a half-native guide (and a native tribesman who is used like a dog) he embarks on a search that makes him experience for himself how cruel reality can be - and when he discovers the remains of the film the four missing (and dead) people left behind as their legacy to the world, he discovers that the cruelty of reality isn't just confined to "primitive" people, and leads him to wonder who the true cannibals are...

I have a few issues with this movie, to be honest. Let's start with the most obvious one:

Lack of cannibalism.

Yes, you read that correctly. Maybe my appetite for gore (no pun intended) is a bit too high for a movie from 1980, but considering that this movie is named Cannibal Holocaust and deals with, well, cannibalism, I was definitely expecting more. What we get are a few scenes of implied cannibalism, and the few shots of "actual" cannibalism just look fake. And not gross and disgusting at all. Or, you know, bloody and violent.

My favourite scene - a meouwser, only in big!

Which brings me to my second point: The blood and the gore effects. For Flying Spaghetti Monster's sake, can it be that hard to at least produce artificial blood that doesn't have that faint touch of pink? Considering that Ruggero Deodato had enough money to film on location in Colombia and New York, only filming the interior scenes in his native Italy, it sure as hell couldn't have been a question of money.

To all you ambitious film makers out there who want to avoid someone like me ranting about how the lack of quality-blood makes your movie terrible: Add a little bit of green to it. Make sure it has the right consistency. Make sure it's not too bright, or, gods forbid, pink. Trust me - a little effort with the blood makes up for a lot. Deodato or whoever was responsible for the creation/acquisition of the fake gore sure as hell didn't go for quality with the blood. Or quantity, if I might add that with a slightly nagging voice.

Third point: The portrayal of the Yanomamo and Shamatari tribes... I don't care that the film is presumably misogynistic, but damn, if that isn't exploitation at its core, I don't know what is. I seriously don't know how they got the natives to cooperate and play their assigned roles in Cannibal Holocaust, because man... demeaning. I was constantly reminded of animals - only that, in my experience and in this movie, animals actually are treated better. As long as they're inedible. Ehm.

Plus... careful with the word "primitive" and the use of the term "stone age" to indicate that something is "primitive". At least try to be careful with that around me, movie, because that happens to just include my archaeological field of study, and I'm easily offended when it comes to calling my chosen cultures "primitive". Or any other culture that is remotely linked to mine by the derogatery use of the term "stone age". Let me add that "stone age" is a bit of a vague term, because it encompasses quite a long time.

Then there's the sex scenes... or should I make that "rape scenes"? I have no problem with rape scenes in general, but watching one in particular, in which the documentarists are gang-raping a young native female, made me feel ashamed of being a member of the species homo sapiens.

Pwetty. Me like.

On to the strong points of Cannibal Holocaust.

The first thing that I noticed was the incredible soundtrack, created flawlessly by Riz Ortolani. It is atmospheric and incredibly well made - it adds a special quality to what may otherwise remain a more or less unspectacular exploitation flick from the very beginning of the eighties.

The gore and violence, whilst not exactly on a level which sits well with the gorehound in me (as the three people who read this blog of mine know, the more blood and guts and pointless violence I get to witness in a horror movie, the more happy I am), is at times beautifully executed, as with the skull in the screenshot above.

What I could have done without was the animal cruelty. 'Nuff said about that topic.

Stone peni:

I will never look at a vibrator with the same eyes after witnessing how the script of Cannibal Holocaust uses that stony, ehm, member.

The acting is actually good - not great, not wonderful, certainly not something that would win an award these days, but it is brutally realistic - partly due to the nature of the scenes the actors were forced through. If you're interested in reading more about the details of the tribulations the cast had to go through, check wikipedia - the whole story is way too long and detailed for me having the flu and still being up, freezing and hungry, at 7:15 AM on this beautiful Tuesday morning. Man... I need sleep badly. And something against the flu. Merf.

A surprisingly good movie, everything considered. Even with the amount of criticising on my part, I still find the movie to be entertaining and moving at the same time with its scenic, sweeping shots, its fast-paced and hectic certainty and bitter grimness. Truly, Cannibal Holocaust manages to do something which I noted with the French directors of The Hills Have Eyes, Inside and other recent awesome movies from that part of Europe: The merciless camera. The viewer becomes entangled in the movie, he is the voyeur for whom these scenes have been staged and created - and although we may flinch and shy away from the brutality, we still are captivated by what happens on the screen.

You certainly won't be bored with this example of cinematic voyeurism.

A moving and brutal criticism of our modern society and how it behaves when there is no law to keep the darkness of humanity in check.

7.75/10 ritualistic punishments for adultery.

Masters of Horror Season 01 - "Incident On and Off a Mountain Road" (2005)

A young woman is driving through the night - her eyes are focused straight ahead, lost in thought, melancholic indie music is playing. She looks down at the radio in order to change the station...

...and crashes into another car.

I believe anything can happen to anyone - at any time.

Flashback - to happier times.

The young woman wakes up from her memories, dragged out of them by regaining her consciousness. Getting out of her car, she realises that the car she crashed into is empty, its doors opened - and blood is everywhere.



Someone tried to escape, obviously. Helplessly, she yells for the person who must have been in that car. And her phone doesn't work anymore either.



But it's not just the victim of the ...car accident who hears her.

You've always got to expect the unexpected... and do the unexpected.

Flashback - to happier times.



But were they really happy?

Our young woman is being hunted - hunted in a game of life and death. By ...something.




Or someone, maybe? And her past has all and nothing to do with it...

When everything else fails you... try everything.

A seriously engaging hunt. The lighting is atmospheric, the camerawork truly good for something that A) ran on TV, B) gets distributed in my video stores for more than double the money than a regular horror DVD. The whole hunt, the whole thing with the flashbacks, the whole thing with the captured guy... impressive. I could love this episode of Masters of Horror if it wasn't for the end.




Pornographic at times. At least for someone like me.




8/10 moments in which you would just love to have those damned torture tools...

Lucker the Necrophagous [Director's Cut] (1986)

John Lucker is a murderer, rapist and necrophiliac. Eight years ago, he went on a rampage, during which he killed eight girls with whom he had... uhm... sexual intercourse afterwards (like, two weeks afterwards). He was caught, and transferred to a mental asylum after he tried to kill himself. Due to practically nonexistant security, he manages to flee the asylum. When he finds out that one of his victims of eight years ago managed to survive, he is determined to find her and finish the job. He spirals out of control, as his urges and violent needs become more intense... on a mission.

I don't know what to say, as I have a distinct set of ambivalent feelings when it comes to this movie - mixed, even. Let me tell you why.



First of all, I want to say a word (or maybe a few) about the dialogues. Why the dialogues, cyn, and not the camerawork, or the terrible VHS to DVD transfer? Because, my dear reader, it's the first thing you will notice.

Seriously: It makes you go insane. It's not just that they are abysmally bad, at the same time, they are like some sort of drill that mercilessly works its way into your mind, never ceasing with the pain, never ceasing to make it hurt in new ways.

Insane. Luckily, there isn't a lot of it - most of the people who actually do the talking are not Lucker (more on that later), usually A) nurse (singular), B) nurses (plural), C) radio, D) random living person, possibly to be killed throughout the course of the movie (the probability to be killed in this movie rises if the person in question is female). Lucker? Oh, right. Lucker. Yeah, he does talk. Once or twice. And no, I won't give away what he's going to say, because it's actually sort of...important... to the ...plot. Note my hesitation there. The one before "plot".

You see, the thing with the plot is this:

Originally, the film was much longer, but due to the negatives being destroyed, it has been difficult for director Johan Vandewoestijne to scrounge together the original for a release. Before, the plot was different, with a journalist investigating the main character, John Lucker, before his rampage in the current release. The journalist becomes intrigued by Lucker, and seeks to take up his mantle. Lucker discovers this, kills the journalist, and continues his rampage.

(Courtesy of imdb.com, as usual when I can make you fall into astonished silence with my insights and knowledge of the movies I watch...)

Now that's what I call a cast. "Girl in jogging"?

Now... VHS to DVD. The sound doesn't work out properly (it happens more than just once... or twice... or 14 times...), so you hear people screaming when they're already dead, or clearly see the lips of the actors moving out of sync to what they are actually saying.
Then there's the transfer of the movie. A lot of... black. The editing isn't too good (I am being kind here), and those annoying black screens will go on your nerves as well if you're anything like me. And trust me, I'm a PATIENT movie addict. Technical problems, a bad transfer, lousy sound... usually, those things don't take away my enjoyment of a movie. In the case of Lucker the Necrophagous, these things unfortunately do (take away my enjoyment of the flick I'm watching). It's just too much in order to be able to ignore it.

And then there's the soundtrack. Oh my Gods, the soundtrack.

I watched this together with TF, and we both came to the same conclusion: Someone had gotten a CASIO home piano for christmas, happened to be a friend of the director and desperately wanted to try out his awesome new fun piano. I swear, you can hear it. I had one of those things (and a bigger one a few years later), and I know how addicting it can be to try out those fascinating special effects and sounds. I was there, man, I was there...

Now, the stuff I've said as of yet doesn't make this movie out to be more than a cheap, dirty flick. But it is. Oh yes, it is more than just a cheap, dirty flick. It provides endless amusement to people who like gory, realistic nasty movies (think of the infamous Video Nasties) and are not bothered by icky stuff, slimy stuff (I've said it once, I'll say it again - movies need more slimy stuff), sex with corpses, violence or misogyny. Then again, people who STILL read my reviews probably don't have a problem with that, although their mileage may vary. I know people who have no problem watching a zombie devour someone alive, and those same people will react with disgust when they see a long drawn-out death scene in a movie about... a necrophiliac serial killer.

I approve of the death scenes. They are awesome. Long, slow, painful to watch and hear (for the victim, or people who are less desensitised to violence than me). I like that.

I also like the grimy feeling of the movie. Here, there's nothing pretty. This movie doesn't need pretty. All it cares for is delivering Lucker's way to us, the viewers.

One scene that I especially liked was the actual necrophilia scene. Delicious. He fucks a hooker four (!) weeks after he killed her. Man, that girl is one juicy bit. Full decomposition. Maggots are crawling underneath her foul skin, she's more liquid than solid (I just say "licking scene" - you'll know what I mean when you see it) - I fully approve. I also fully approve of said licking scene. Lucker, Lucker, Lucker... you're not just one lucky motherfucker (see what I did there?!) to have a dame like this to mount, you're also so going down the path to becoming a ghoul*...

Okay, I'm going to skip forward now. It does not become a lady of my age and social stature to... watch this particular scene all too often (and on a sidenote - I could have done with less man-beef and more corpse).

Back to the main protagonist: Lucker.
Brilliant dialogues. "Uh", "Ah", "Oh", "Uuuuuh", sometimes I even detect the hint of an "Ugh". He speaks one or two times throughout the whole movie. But this does not deter from what I like to call his charme and him being full of win. Because, to make a really long story short: Lucker is cool. I like Lucker. I mean, how can you NOT find a necrophiliac, psychotic serial killer with serious communication problems likeable?

After 45 minutes, the movie really clocks in and we get more. More of what, you ask? Well, more of everything. Coolness, mostly. And some light torture and psychological terror (but only light - then again, my definition of "light" may be a tad different from yours).

Enjoyable flick. If you're looking for some movie about necrophilia - I personally prefer Lucker to Nekromantik (1 and 2). Or maybe I just like watching helpless women scream and moan and beg, who knows. *shrugs*

You're warned: Not light fare. But adorable. The only way this could have become more enjoyable would have been a skullfuck. But alas, you can't have everything.


7/10 decomposed heads being forced into the face of a screaming, tied up woman.


P.S.: The final piece of dialogue will either melt your brain, or make you laugh out loud. Just a hint:


...and I invite you to play the game of "Come Up With A Different, Witty Ending Dialogue To Lucker the Necrophagous" as well. Trust me. You will anyways. It's impossible not to do it.



* Leichengifte!

Hexen bis aufs Blut gequält aka Mark of the Devil aka Austria 1700 (1970)

Udo Kier! Awesome!

And it's a truly fucking Austrian movie. Holy crap, I am so proud of my country. And our mountains. Can you see those mountains? They're truly awesome mountains.

According to the imdb, this movie has been shot in "West Germany". That's not true. It has been shot in Austria - namely the districts of Salzburg and Niederösterreich (Lower Austria). I lived there for 16 years (in Salzburg, but part of my so-called family comes from Niederösterreich), I should know how the area looks like. And turns out I was right:

Castle Moosham, Salzburg, Austria

Mauterndorf, Salzburg, Austria

Krems, Lower Austria, Austria

- funnily enough, my (now dead) grandmother (from my mother's side) lived there, and I was there often enough. And it's just half an hour on the train to Krems (which I am speaking about).

This is Krems. Yes, most of the... place looks like this.

Mauterndorf is also a place I am familiar with, as is Castle Moosham. Sheesh. No wonder this movie looks so familiar.

A guy who raped a nun:

Being tarred and feathered? Cool. That's awesome. I especially approve of the gleeful expressions on the faces of those present.

Idyllic everyday scenes from rural Austria...

Witch burning (see above). Could have been more graphic, but alas, it's the 70s.

Now, get ready for... NARRATOR VOICE!

"In Europe, between 15th and 19th centuries, it is estimated nearly eight million people were convicted of heresy and executed by fanatical witch hunters, in order to save their souls.

Their deaths on the scaffold or the funeral pile was for them the release from agonizing torture which often lasted for years.

This motion picture shows three cases taken from authentic documents from the time when witch-hunting had reached its peak and can only give a slight idea of the cruelties of one of the blackest pages in the history of Man."

(Actual quote from movie - in fiery letters, no less!)


There seems to be a problem with wide-spread witchcraft (in Austria?!). The local witchfinder doesn't really want to cooperate with the two new arrivals (one of them is Udo K... I mean, Christian) who come with a letter from the Holy See, authorising them as well. To do... witch-finding.

Our Hero

(Believe it or not, but this actually is Udo Kier, about 4 decades ago. I actually said out loud "I don't believe it!" when I looked it up on the imdb. Then again, I could have guessed - after all, he has the eyes...)


Of course, the local witchfinder didn't really keep his books on witch-killing properly, so he wants his underling to make up proper manuscripts of the... "investigations", complete with confessions. So that everything looks alright to the annoying newcomers - who are nothing but heralds for the true problem to come: Lord Cumberland, some sort of really important witch-hunter.

Albino

Even if his underling has to write all night - something which I personally find hilarious, as I've spent many a night doing nothing but writing up stuff and then presenting it to an audience. If a female, sickly student can do it in 2008, a witchfinder's sidekick should be able to do so, as well.

This is how Evil Guys intimidate underlings to write stuff all night. Professors can do it with a glance and a "...I need it tomorrow."

Albino, the local witchfinder (remember?), takes a fancy to the young lady working at the inn he's staying at.

The girl. The one with the skirt, you moron...

His attempt to rape her results in a scar on his cheek, so he accuses her of witchcraft.

Boob-touching can result in...

...this.

I also want to draw attention to Hitler-Beard. I don't know if it was fashionable during the 70s to spout a Hitler-moustache, but damn me if I didn't laugh out loud when I first saw the guy sitting around. He's just there. He does nothing. I think he even says nothing.
You have to realise that, in Austria, whilst funny to some people like me who just have a weird sense of humour, anything WWII-related is somehow attached to a deeply rooted stigma - a taboo, practically. By merely cracking a Hitler joke on teh intartubes, I am technically breaking the law in Austria. We're very touchy about this subject, and very obsessed with it. In school, you're herded into a bus once your mind is able to be imprinted and influenced by the authorities and then driven off to Auschwitz, where you experience a day filled with mind-blowing guilt techniques.

Let me tell you something about Hitler Beard. I like to think that he was just hanging around the set, a curious, yet simple farmer with an oddly shaped, funny but socially awkward beard. The director saw him, and thought "ZOMG that's freaking hilarious - Hitler Beard!" ...and so, a legend was born.




By the way - we get cool torture scenes. Not really cool kinds of torture, but at least some.




The whole attempted rape - violence - accusing of witchcraft out of spite and revenge is a bit of a problem, because Udo Ki... Christian found the local witchfinder's underling (I call him "Chinny") trying to forge documents, AND he (Udo K... Christian) has taken a fancy to the girl as well. Apparently. At least he invites her over to dinner at his place. I take that to be an expression of ...emotion. And usually, he doesn't have any of that stuff. Emotion, I mean.

May I sleep here? Just... for one night...?

Man, this is going fast! She obviously likes him ("What is... your name?" - "...Christian..." - "...good night... Christian..."). As in... really likes him. Has the hots for him. Wants to do the nasty with him... you get the picture. Also, look at that face - if that isn't an inviting smile, I don't know what is.

Our beautiful heroine wakes up to the sound of drums - it's the messengers of Sir Cumberlain, and the accursed heretics brought with them.

As the story goes on, the local witch-finder is jealous of the budding relationship between his younger rival (Christian) and the young lady working at the inn (girl with name). So, what's a guy to do?

That's right. You accuse your desired girlfriend of witchcraft. Again.

As soon as Lord Cumberlain arrives, the music becomes... intense. Intense and dramatic. I congratulate the person who wrote it on the soundtrack - it truly is beautiful, and it manages to convey an additional sense of intensity to the scenes.

A problem arises when our local witch-finder Albino brings in a young, obviously tortured woman, who he accuses of various very witchy crimes (all of them really strange, weird and unbelievable). She was actually raped by the Lord Bishop, but that makes her even more of a suspect, so she's going onto the rack.

And then... of course... the young woman working at the inn. (Her name's Vanessa Benedict - the scriptwriter was nice enough to make them tell us her name legitimately during a ...hearing (?)) -Accused of having had intercourse with the Devil, making a pact with him and thereby rendering another man (we can just guess...) impotent. Lord Cumberlain doesn't want to deal with this case, and relegates Vanessa to the jail.




Christian expresses his desire to become a learned witch-hunter to his mentor, the Lord, and the topic of Vanessa comes up. Lord Cumberlain doesn't approve of Christian's feelings for her, stating that it's her witchcraft that makes him attracted to her.

We also get pretty girls in irons and with thumbscrews, actually smashing fingers.

Christian starts to see the ugliness of the church when he witnesses his mentor trying to make a convicted sorcerer sign over all of his belongings (= a lot) to the church in exchange for his life.

I have read quite my share of books about witchcraft, the inquisition, witch trials and what went on during the Dark Ages. However, reading about it is one thing. Watching it is an entirely different thing. For once, I don't masturbate to the Malleus Malleficarum. Or at least I haven't tried it yet...

...just kidding.

(Or not?!)

But these scenes are awesome. Never have whipped, abused females looked as good as in this movie (then again, it's my 2nd exploitation movie, so I can't be considered an authority on the subject...).

Man. That's so pr0n.

Especially with the sweet, vanilla sex scene afterwards (two random people we'll never see again, just there to provide us with softcore porn).

Aesthetic shots. But whereas it's morally totally okay for me to show graphic pictures of violene, I can't show you the sex scene. It would make this into a pr0n-blog (let's see how much weird google search results this will produce).

Albino (the local witch-hunter's name) notices naked nameless woman, he and his horde of edumacated idiots storm the room, he gets it on with her (implied rape), and his idiot underlings kill the guy she was doing it with first. Problem? Problem.

Now it gets complicated (Whoa there, cyn!, you say - a 70s horror flick with a complicated plot?! Slow down, slow down, this can't be true!), so bear with me: Albino's underling/secretary betrays his master's behaviour to Lord Cumberland as he is about to torture a young woman (the one who got raped by the Lord Bishop). For example, with ingenuous contraptions that are made to hold someone tight and secure. In case you want to rip someone's tongue out with a old, rusty metal thingie.

See? Told ya you could use it for that!

Lord Cumberland wants to relieve the witch-finder Albino of his duties due to the incident with the implied rape of a young woman, which turns into a heated argument, with Albino threatening to tell everyone that he is evil, rapes women and burns them out of fun. When he adds impotence to the list of crimes (huh?) he wants to accuse Cumberland of (of which Cumberland is mostly innocent, we can guess, but Albino isn't), the Lord Cumberland snaps and kills Albino by strangulation.

Christian happens to watch this - and his faith in god and the church is a bit... shaken, you might say.

"I slept with faith and found a corpse in my arms on awakening; I drank and danced all night with doubt and found her a virgin in the morning.", as Uncle Al would have said. Probably.

The interaction between Christian and Lord Cumberland gets increasingly strained with tension due to the murder the Lord committed. Cumberland reminds him of the fact that innocents get killed in their line of business. Morals and ethics all play a big part in this, as does the eternal question: Is it alright to kill for something that has to do with religion?

Interspersed throughout the movie and its actual plot (I still find it hard to believe that) are the torture scenes. Quite some of them. And for people like me, who know obscure stuff about torture methods, even the mere notion of "The Spanish Boots should convince him" makes me happy.




Of course, they serve a reason - they illustrate the cruelty and pointlessness of a religious system inherently flawed in its conception of "good" and "evil" and its ways of deciding which is which.

Some part of me, however, thinks that it's also exceedingly awesome.

I won't go into any further details, as I have already given some things away, but this movie delivers.




Torture, rape... you want it, you get it.




The pacing is just right - scenes float into each other in just the right way. There is a careful, measured element to the way everything works and interacts. This is storytelling well done.

The camerawork is, for a movie from 1970, outstanding. Granted, I know more 50s and 60s movies than 70s ones (that period seems to be the one decade that I somehow managed to miss out), so I don't have a reference point to what could be considered a standard for how good movies during the 70s have to look like, but it's very beautiful. They chose really good locations for shooting this film.

The acting is equally as good - especially our leads are outstanding. Udo Kier is brilliant as ever, especially in the later parts of this movie, and the beautiful Olivera Katarina portrays her character with full conviction. Herbert Lom, who plays Lord Cumberland, was a no-namer to me until I checked him on the internet and found out that he's playing Insp. Dreyfus in the Pink Panther movies that my dad always used to watch with me when they were on TV. Dad, posthumously: I don't know if you ever knew that this guy also played a woman-raping and torturing witch-finder, but he does it good.




And now let me dedicate a little bit to Reggie Nalder (born Alfred Reginald Natzick here in beautiful and decrepid Vienna, back when it was still the center of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, which was about a century ago - see, horror movies can be educating!).

I was impressed with his role as the lecherous witch-hunter Albino. He is a great actor - and constantly, there was this nagging feeling back in my mind that I somehow KNEW his face. Turns out I was right: He played the vampire Barlow in the 1979 TV series "Salem's Lot", based on the Stephen King novel. When I watched that more than a decade ago, I was pissed off at how shitty the vampire looked. Herr Natzick, you ruined one of the few Stephen King books for me with your decidedly blue depiction of the vampire. However, you made it up with your role in this movie.


9/10 really not happy endings. Which maketh me happy.

Edit I: I also just notice how incredibly good-looking all of the somewhat important female characters are. They look naturally pretty - not the glamorous, glossy version of "good looking" we have come to expect from new movies made with a shiny cast of hot young actors, not the kind of looking good that is achieved by tricky use of lighting and make up - just plain, normal, good looking women. It's good to see that once in a while.

Edit II: Somehow, after the whole impotence thing got brought up in the movie, I constantly had the feeling that there was something more to it. A sort of sub-sub-plot, if you will. But check the timing of sayings like "I know who you are!", "I know WHAT you are!" and the word "impotence" and see for yourself. It was almost like a running gag... at least in my head. Ahem.